Thanks npavel for the links.
OK, I watched Aikiko and I liked it alot. You are right, her footwork is marvelous and I like her musicality.
But - she is traveling on her spins and I don't like her posture. At times it is OK at other times her back is unattractive. Jumps were OK with a nice 2A.

I hope to see it tomorrow on big , clear TV screen. These streams are great fun but not necessarily good for judging, atleast for my tired old eyes.

BTW, I love that Akiko is skating her LP to West Side Story. She looks like a skater who can do justice to some of my favorite Broadway music.
Phantom and Les Miz - total bleh for me.

Love Mirai. Lots of charisma and presence, love her flow - ladies skating needs her to do well, IMO, with apologies to Yuna.

Don't think she ur or pr her jumps. With her toe pick she really reaches that free leg back and to the side but she's not, IMO, pre-rotating her blade on take off when she does that.

Also, I like that she goes out there with the demeanor of a classic ladies' contender of yore, not the demeanor of a recent graduate of a self-help seminar. I think a lot of the skaters in N.A. are way too in their heads, way too self-aware when they skate, and it has a confidence inhibiting effect. She's not -not when she skates, anyway. Love her hands, head, spins too.

Mirai's combination jump seemed UR imo, but her double axel was beautiful-- her body didn't dip down the way it did on the landing during Golden West. SO GLAD she put in a layback ina bauer-- no one does it as lovely as Mirai (well, of the amateur girls =P)...Most enjoyable program from the ladies....Korpi seems overmarked.

Rachael definitely fought for those landings, poor girl. In fact, she seemed very out of sorts. I wonder if I just think so because her hair is in a simple ponytail and she NEVER has had it in anything but a beautifully coiffed bun-- did she run out of time preparing? Or is this her way of 'letting loose' and going outside of her 'elegant' comfort zone? To be honest, I just don't think Sing Sing Sing is going to be received well by the international audience/judges....though the Golden West audience really dug it. It just seems a bit too 'American' and junior-ish/cutesy/exhibition program-esque. Which may be alright for Nationals but not really the Grand Prix or Olympics...

Danke, that was sweet and smooth - but still with a very saucy edge to it.
Too many skaters are using Tango without capturing the spirit of the dance in their footwork and the overall mood of the dance.

But what if the PCS total was, say, divided by 2 (so it's only 1/3 instead of 1/2 the score)? Even more radical, they can be tossed out completely, if skating wanted to be actually *objective*.

Well, the ladies' short program PCSs are already multiplied by a factor of .8. (I think this is so Yu-na Kim will not score higher overall than the top men, who automatically get a 25% bonus in PCSs compared to the ladies. )

Plus, the components that generate the controversy are the subjective/artistic components of performance, choreography and intepretation. The split between tech and performance is already 70-30 on the side of tech.

By the way, I looked up Akiko Suzuki's birthday, and it is that famous day, March 28!

Well, the ladies' short program PCSs are already multiplied by a factor of .8. (I think this is so Yu-na Kim will not score higher overall than the top men, who automatically get a 25% bonus in PCSs compared to the ladies. )

Plus, the components that generate the controversy are the subjective/artistic components of performance, choreography and intepretation. The split between tech and performance is already 70-30 on the side of tech.

oh, ok.

So then, what if it was 85-15 instead. If there was no "padding" this wouldn't be an issue but there has to be less room for this imo.

So then, what if it was 85-15 instead. If there was no "padding" this wouldn't be an issue but there has to be less room for this imo.

So far, the ISU has not totally given up on the idea that there ought be a judged, artistic component to a figure skating performance -- with all the negatives that go along with it in terms of judging controversies, bias, collusion, cheating, reputation judging, politics, etc.

Personally, I think the present 70-30 split is not bad. I think the place where the present scoring system can be tighteded up is in the Skating Skills and Transitions categories. Transitions, especially. It should not be a matter of opinion whether or not a skater includes Ina Bauers, split jumps, unlisted jumps like single Walleys, spread eagles, mini-spirals, plus an assortment of steps and turns between scored elements.

If a judge gives a score of 8.5 for transitions, that judge should be able to list the transitional moves that the skater did to justify that score.

And Kostner didn't get any points for the spiral sequence because the last position was held for less than three seconds.

Originally Posted by Mathman

If a judge gives a score of 8.5 for transitions, that judge should be able to list the transitional moves that the skater did to justify that score.

Because that's going to make the judging system and the judging so much easier, the judges don't only have to rate every spin, jump and spiral / step sequences - they also have to write down every single move made in between the elements.

We should just hold the competitions like the figures in earlier years then. The judge could also take a ruler then and measure how deep the edges are and out of 50 measurements during the free program there will be calculated the average deepness of the edge during footwork, crossovers etc. While we are at it, we should also start to determine the degrees between legs / arms / body during the spins, e.g. the greater the arch on the layback, the more points the person gets. The revolutions per a certain time is also measured, as is the amount of centimetres the blade travels during the spin.

Kostner looked better than at france, i wonder whether the problem with her and Ponsero is their speed. Too much speed going into the jump, that they are not able to control the jump itself.

Nagasu's combo looked Ur but that was balanced out by her very low pcs. Pcs will surely get a inflation if she skates clean. Her program looked lot better than the one at west coast competition i believe.

Personally, I think the present 70-30 split is not bad. I think the place where the present scoring system can be tighteded up is in the Skating Skills and Transitions categories. Transitions, especially. It should not be a matter of opinion whether or not a skater includes Ina Bauers, split jumps, unlisted jumps like single Walleys, spread eagles, mini-spirals, plus an assortment of steps and turns between scored elements.
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Totally. The transitions category is often what makes me scratch my head.

I thought most of the problems regarding subjectivity/bias would be mediated if we had as many judges as possible, but ISU went ahead and reduced the number instead..so..I don't know what to say..

...The revolutions per a certain time is also measured, as is the amount of centimetres the blade travels during the spin.

For jumps, this would completely resolve the controversy about whether underrotated triples should be downgraded to the base value of doubles. For a flip jump, for instance, you get .0051 per degrees of revolution. So a completely rotated triple would give you 5.508, and a triple flip that is underrotated by 90 degrees would get only 5.049.

Now multiply that by (1+/- x/90), where x is the number of degrees plus or mius from the vertical of the take-off edge.

But seriously, no, I don't think it would be a burden on the judges to be supplied with objective criteria for what counts as a transitional element. The alternative is what we have now. A skater gets 7.75 for Transitions for a program that has none. (Not mentioning any names. )